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IntraLogic Solutions Inc. |
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November 25, 2013 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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Security Solutions for Businesses, Municipalities, Government Agencies and School Districts |
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IntraLogic
Solutions Inc. (ILS) dedicates itself to providing cutting edge, user
friendly, and affordable security solutions to all types of businesses,
municipalities, government agencies, and school districts. Our sales team
will work with you to design a system to meet your needs, and work within
your budget. Our installation team will oversee your entire project from
start to finish, and our in house support team will assist you 24/7 with the
highest level of customer service.
Mandel grew up in Long Island, New York and was always fond of Technology.
In 2000 as Mandel attended Hofstra University, and received a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting he created his first company Fast Lane Technologies. Fast Lane focused on creating innovate software and websites including online dating services.
After outgrowing Fast Lane Technologies Mandel expanded and created IntraLogic Solutions in 2004. IntraLogic currently has 40 Full time employees and has been listed as one of the fastest growing security companies in the United States.
Mandel is married to his supportive wife Nicole and currently resides in New York near his Corporate Headquarters.
In 2014 Mandel
intends to open his new 17,000 square foot Global Command and Operations
center in Nassau County, NY. This new center will be the largest of its kind
on Long Island monitoring security for businesses and government agencies
all over the globe. |
Security Solutions
IntraLogic Solutions Inc.
504 Hicksville Rd. 516.799.7061
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CEOCFO: Mr. Mandel, what is the concept at IntraLogic Solutions? Mr. Mandel: IntraLogic creates technology for school districts, towns, government agencies and municipalities that offer school safety and security features such as CCTV, card access, as well as lock down systems.
CEOCFO: What are some of the features that you are able to provide that people might not even realize can be done? Mr. Mandel: Our solution ties in an existing security system and enhances it. Therefore, rather than looking to just replace what a school or town may have in place, we will actually work with what they have and enhance it and then bring it to the next level by making the systems smarter than they were.
CEOCFO: Would you give me an example of how you make a system smarter? Mr. Mandel: Some of those technologies we use include video analytics. Video analytics is a technology that takes existing cameras and adds technology to them to make them think. For example, we do things like trip line detection, where if someone passes through a certain area the system will alert and alarm under those conditions. We also do things like facial detection that allows us to detect and capture faces coming in and out of a facility and store them in a data base. There is also our lock down technology that allows us to, at the click of a button or via text message, lock a facility or school down, automatically.
CEOCFO: That is clearly something that has been in the news today, yesterday and many, many other days, unfortunately. How do you test the systems? How do you insure that they will work should a situation arise that is less than stellar, shall we say? Mr. Mandel: All of the systems that we install are monitored by our VSM platform, which stands for Vital Sign Monitoring. Every fifteen minutes we monitor all of these devices and they check in with our servers here at our Massapequa headquarters. Therefore, if a system was to go down and not function properly we would actually know about it before the system malfunctioned and did not work and take a proactive approach, rather than a reactive approach.
CEOCFO: In what way? What would you do? Mr. Mandel: Typically, when we get a VSM alarm coming into our systems, we will alert the client and let them know that the system may be malfunctioning or may be down and get authorized access to perform a service call or a maintenance call.
CEOCFO: Do you work with individual schools or would it be at the district level? Mr. Mandel: We typically work with districts. Here on Long Island we work with over seventy school districts in both Nassau County and Suffolk County, as well as the Westchester area. We also do a lot of work with townships and municipalities. However, when we work with a school district it is most often the entire district, not just a couple of the schools within the district.
CEOCFO: What is the competitive landscape? Are there many companies that specialize in the same arena as IntraLogic? Mr. Mandel: We do have some competition, but the competition does not offer everything we do as a “one stop shop”. There are companies that just offer one component or two components or three components. However, we are able to connect everything together and make everything work with each other. This makes it a different approach than most of our competition takes.
CEOCFO: Was that the original plan when the company started or did it develop more opportunistically? Mr. Mandel: When we started the company we were just a generic technology company like everyone else out there. We fine tunedour offerings to figure out what fit our model best. After we got into the security field we started working with traditional private businesses, small business and moved in to large corporate enterprise solutions, as well as working with government agencies.
CEOCFO: How does it break down today between government and private? Would you like to see the mix change? Mr. Mandel: I would say that we are roughly about eighty percent government and twenty percent private. We are very happy with that. We enjoy working with government. The other section of the market that we really specialize in is large chain companies that have multiple locations and are trying to connect them together. We feel that when we go into a large enterprise environment like a government agency or a large corporation our pricing model is very competitive.
CEOCFO: Many people find government not the best entity to work with. What do you understand about government’s practices that lets you say you enjoy working with them? Mr. Mandel: You have to really understand how government billing works, as well as how the time frames work. Obviously, when we work with the government there are several contracts that you have to become a member of. Things have to go out to bid. There is a lot of paperwork and a lot of responding to different bids. Payroll rates are quite different than they would be if you were working for a private business due to rules and regulations that require the payment of prevailing wage. However, we have really learned how to harness these different challenges that most companies see as a challenge and really use them to our advantage to really give us a “leg up” on the competition.
CEOCFO: Security seems to be more important every day, but budgetary issues and the lack of funds are just as important. How do these play out when you are working with your clients or with new clients? Mr. Mandel: We actually work with many of our clients in not only helping designing systems but working within their budget. We also help them to find funding. We work with many grant writers. We work on several state contracts here in New York and we are able to help locate funds to assist these schools, towns and municipalities to streamline the integration of this technology. Being that security is on the front line right now, there are many opportunities out there to get government funding and to get different grants.
CEOCFO: Is that typical of companies similar to yours or is that something a little more unique to IntraLogic? Mr. Mandel: I think it is definitely something that is very unique. Most companies are sales people. They go in and they sell you a product; they say this is the price. We go in and do an assessment. We get an idea of what they need, what they have, how we can make it work together and how we can help fund it. Therefore, it is kind of the “one stop shop” approach.
CEOCFO: Where do you find that governments and school districts and your clients fall short in what they are covering? Mr. Mandel: I feel that most schools fall short by unfortunately waiting for something to happen. The events last December at Sandy Hook Elementary School and again the events that happened yesterday in Nevada, really brings school security to the front line. When events like this happen we find that people tend to react. We have noticed, since those events have happened, people reacting quickly, rushing to install and change technology. We take a different approach and assess what a school has and try to understand it. We see where they fall short; whether it is with lack of camera coverage or securing the perimeter of their campus. Rather than trying to address what costs the most money, we address what will fit into the client’s budget and solve the problem that they have at hand.
CEOCFO: There seem to be new technologies every day. How do you keep up? How do you know what you might want to incorporate into your offering and what is likely to go by the wayside? Mr. Mandel: When we look at a new technology we make sure that it is going to fit into a price point that most of clients would want it to fit into. We also make sure it is going to integrate with existing technology, because we are big on tying multiple technologies together. However, we also look to make sure it is going to be effective and it is going to sustain in the marketplace. When we find a new technology we experiment with it internally. We usually send it out for trials in some of our key clients that we work with and before we put anything in place we thoroughly evaluate a product.
CEOCFO: What do you look for? What are the intangibles you want in your staff? You have mentioned a number of times the “this is not just a business” feeling. Mr. Mandel: We obviously want dedicated employees. We want honest employees. We are one of the few companies that do everything in house. We do not subcontract any work out. By doing everything in house that gives us the ability to have control of what is going on. Therefore, when we are looking for employees, we are looking for people who are long-term employees and are honest and have integrity.
CEOCFO: What is ahead? What do you see different a year or two down the line, if anything? Mr. Mandel: It is hard to tell. Last year we would have never thought that the school market would have picked up the way that it has. Our business is very reactive, based on current events that happen related to security. Unfortunately the way things seem to be going with different laws and policies, security becomes more and more important every day in every type of business; whether it is a school, a town, a municipality, a government agency or even a private business. We feel that security is becoming more and more of an accepted feature and considered something that is needed. We definitely see tremendous expansion on a year over year basis.
CEOCFO: You mentioned having all of the technology work together. Would you give me an example of something that took a little work, perhaps a little thinking outside of the box, to make a more rounded offering? Mr. Mandel: One of the things that we do is we take our camera technology and our burglar alarm technology and we tie it all together. What I mean by that is, in a school district environment we allow teachers or administrators to be able to press a panic button located on the wall anywhere in the building, or even use a cellular phone to initiate what we call a “one button lockdown”. When that lockdown is initiated we synchronize several components of the lockdown system. We first automatically, with that press of the button, contact the police and let them know the geographic location of where the panic alarm and the lockdown came in from. We then work with our burglar alarm systems to actually monitor the perimeter doors and secure them by disabling people from being able to come into the building. At the same time that happens we flash strobe lights on the exterior doors, so that people from off campus know not to return to campus, because we are in a lock down state. We also monitor to see if any doors are propped open. If they are using the burglar alarm system contacts we can actually send a snap shot via the camera of who opened and propped that door. While this is all going on we play an automated PA message through the PA system letting the building level security know that we are in a lockdown state and letting staff and students know that we are in a lockdown. All of this happens simultaneously, tying in multiple technologies including the cameras, the card access, the burglar alarm system and the fire alarm system, into a unified platform.
CEOCFO: How do you work with the schools or with the government agencies or even with your private clients and get them to understand how the system works and should they press the button if there is any doubt? Are people a little too cautious or some people a little too quick to press a panic button? How do you make all of that work smoothly and to everyone’s best advantage? Mr. Mandel: Training is the key to the success of these systems. If you do not have the right training people are going to misuse the systems and abuse the systems. Therefore, we believe in training very heavily in all of the systems we put in. We spend a lot of time with the staff in each of these facilities to train them on what type of event should trigger them to push this panic button and what type of event should trigger them to call 911.
CEOCFO: Why pay attention to IntraLogic Solutions? Why does the company stand out?
Mr. Mandel:
We are an up
and coming company. We have grown tremendously and doubled in size over the
past year. Being that security is a hot topic in general, IntraLogic is
right at the forefront. You hear security being talked about everyday in the
newspapers and television. We are definitely a company to look out for in
the future as we continue to expand and grow and come up with new
technologies that not only help secure our government facilities and
schools, but also gives us the ability to really provide a cost effective
platform that fits into the restrictions of typical budgets today. |
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Interview
conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published –
November 25, 2013